Carl Sagan

Exactly. As it happens I've just signed up an author who is undoubtedly the world's leading expert on Martian colonies, for a book to publish next year. I might trust his expertise a little more than the sad haters on here. What SpaceX has achieved is extraordinary - it would be, even without Starship, but to have the entire ethos of your company built around colonizing Mars rather than on making money (hence it remains the world's most valuable private company rather than risk shareholders derail the vision) has allowed them to turn marshland in Texas into the world's most advanced spaceship-yard in the course of only a few years. And to be on course for lowering the cost of flying a person to Mars from around $50 billion per astronaut, to about $500,000 per astronaut. That's reducing it by a factor of 100,000. And once Humanity has one bridgehead elsewhere in the solar system, the move elsewhere becomes much easier. For instance, because of Earth's much deeper gravitational well, asteroid mining will be driven from Mars, so in time there will be a virtuous economic triangle between Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt. It's wonderful to see this future begin to unfold before our eyes. I loved this image from the SpaceX tracking cameras that already shows how far we've come:

Failed miserably

I did enjoy! And was somewhat surprised when one of my authors made a cameo appearance. Cheers!

I'd guess somewhere between 500-1000 for test pilots. It has been designed to, ultimately, launch several times a day, so these numbers are not unreasonable. SpaceX plans to transition all its launches to Starship because it's so cheap and has hundreds of times more capacity per launch. This year SpaceX will have about 90 launches of its Falcon9 and plans to ratchet up next year. But, an interesting element of your question is that Starship (the upper stage) is the Moon-landing system for America to go back to the Moon, officially in 2025 but it will be 2026 or 2027. For that mission, astronauts have to launch in the Orion capsule atop the $4bn Space Launch System (but which has an astronaut escape system if something goes wrong in the launch) and then, once orbiting the Moon, they will dock with Starship which will taken them down to the lunar surface. Then Starship will launch off the Moon, dock with the Orion capsule that will then take the astronauts back to Earth. So Humans will fly in it relatively soon, but they won't launch it it. Once it's proven safe, astronauts will simply fly straight to the Moon in it (refuelling in Earth orbit), cutting the cost of the flight by a factor of about a thousand.

Yes you're right. To look at the costs, over the last decade two massive rockets have made it to the launchpad. One is the US Government's Space Launch System or SLS. The idea was this would be cheap because it would reuse Space Shuttle engines. It's basically an updated Saturn V, yet the development costs have so far been $50 billion, and to build and launch a single rocket to send 4 humans into space, will cost at least $4 billion every single launch, after which the bits of the rocket crash into the sea. Boeing can only build about one a year. By contrast, Starship is designed to be the first entirely reusable rocket, also with a massive payload capacity. SpaceX has entirely privately funded its development, to the tune of around $10 billion so far. However, the actual construction costs of a Starship will only be about $5 million, and because it's completely reusable, the main launch costs are just the fuel which is about $50,000. So, already you can see it will be thousands of times cheaper. But there's more. It's lift capacity is far greater than SLS, in terms of cargo and/or humans. Instead of SLS's 4 astronauts, Starship has been designed to take 100 people at a time into space. So the cost per person is massively less. The site in Texas where they're being built is hoped to eventually roll out one Starship every week, building up a fleet of ships. Then, when the Mars launch window opens (every 26 months it's the optimal time), all these can fly to Mars together. And the ships can fly back from Mars to help bring the next batch of settlers in the next window. However, as you say, who would want to fly such a thing when we've seen it blow up? There will not be tens, but rather hundreds/thousands of uncrewed flight tests before it's considered safe for Humans to be on board. But how could SpaceX afford so many test flights? That's the genius of the Starlink program. Instead of launching empty test vehicles, SpaceX will fill them with its Starlink satellites to create (and be able to charge for) internet access across the world, including for the 3 billion Humans currently unconnected. The revenues help fund the Starship program (as well as satellite launches on SpaceX's other smaller rockets). Also, once Humans are on Mars, the Starlink technology will give them internet access anywhere on the red planet. It's a brilliantly integrated plan.

Fabulous test. First time around, as well as the pad disintegrating, many of the Raptor engines on the SuperHeavy booster failed, both elements combining to mean the trajectory was far from "nominal". And then the two parts failed to separate. This time the pad remained intact, all 33 booster Raptors fired magnificently for the entire duration, and then the two ships separated. A shame the SuperHeavy booster experienced its rapid unscheduled disassembly soon after, but it was beautiful to see the Starship fly off into the sunrise, and on into space. Its own Raptor engines (3 sea level in the centre and 3 vacuum around the outside) burned for a further 6 minutes, propelling it to 20,000 kmh and a height of 150km (when the official boundary of space is 100km). What a result! So they don't put anyone at risk, both vehicles are armed with explosives so they can be blown up in case anything goes wrong (the flight termination system or FTS). It seems that just before Starship's engines shut down to allow it to coast to over Hawaii before reentry, something triggered the FTS. Oh well. But the key objectives of this flight test were achieved and the great thing is, with the launchpad fine and licences in place, they have lots more test rockets already built and nearly ready to go. I'd expect test flight 3 in a couple of months and the cadence to really start ratcheting up. You have to love Twitter's AI, Grok, which has given a hilarious summary in almost real-time (another powerful technology):

A schoolboy error as I was thinking of the wrong timezones. If any of you are setting your alerts for this (and you should - it will be amazing) the window is open for 20 minutes from 1pm tomorrow. Here's a picture from today, showing the view of the launch site at that time in the morning. It should be beautiful and spectacular.

Forgot to note that SpaceX needed to replace one of the large titanium grid fins on the SuperHeavy booster, so today's test flight has moved back a day until noon tomorrow. When the launch window is only 20 minutes, instead of the 2 hours it would have been this afternoon. There'll be an official live stream on Twitter (not great quality) and on the SpaceX website, with lots of great unofficial streams and commentary from the likes of NASA SpaceFlight on YouTube.

This is interesting as it showcase the difference between some military and civilian technology. This X-37B military space plane (uncrewed) has just landed after being in orbit for more than two-and-a-half years. Amazing. Doing what, who knows? But the protective outfits of those going to assess it on landing, do leave a bit to be desired. Green wellies!? Which helps me loop this thread back to Starship and SpaceX. Elon was adamant that their spacesuits should be really cool, and he famously had a superhero film designer work with them on the look. And they're better than everyone else's spacesuits (of course). But then you look at the SpaceX boots and see function trumps form even there, and they look terrible too! The only difference is the wellies aren't green...

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

Failed with Glastonbury coach tickets. Which means having to get up for the 9am scramble on Sunday morning, continually refreshing 4 computers for an hour, only to fail again. Grrr

The Fish and Wildlife service has given its formal approval: It's all so ridiculous and has held up the launch for months. Now this is done, The Federal Aviation Authority can formally sign the licence, and the first launch attempt will be Friday. The launch window will open from 1pm Greenwich Mean Time (which in space terms is known as Universal Time) and will remain open for two hours. Whether it flies to Hawaii or blows up on the launchpad, excitement is guaranteed!

And a lovely person has superimposed some of my narration over a cool video of Starship flying to Mars:

And here's the intended flightpath if Starship makes it all the way to Hawaii where it will ditch in the sea, with the SuperHeavy booster ditching in The Gulf (this time only):

The second Integrated Flight Test has been delayed for months (and with it Humanity's future among the stars) because America's Fish and Wildlife Service wanted precise odds of Starship hitting a sperm whale when it ditches in the ocean. Bureaucracy (or Biden's anti-Musk agenda) out of control. Happily it seems they've not found any other reasons to try to delay the launch, so it looks as if excitement is guaranteed for Friday. Here's a SpaceX video to prepare for the event.

I was just going to post the 4-4-2 version of this, which is a bit more in-depth. Soucek looked desperate to score against the Gumps, and had hit the bar before bagging the winner. It's great he says he's still in touch with the teacher from England who instilled his love for the Rams: https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/tomas-soucek-interview-declan-rice-told-us-the-czech-republic-cant-beat-england-at-wembley

I live beside the war memorial to the merchant navy, which is effectively my front garden. We all gather there for 11am on Armistice Day, wearing our poppies. It must be a terrible thing, perhaps below deck at sea, when torpedoed and the freezing water rushing in, in the darkness. Later in the day yesterday, I had to go into the West End and I was struck that hardly anyone in London was wearing a poppy. I think it's important that the poppy, just as other symbols like the flag, are cherished by everyone, precisely so they do not become "owned" in some way by extremists. I get the white poppy for peace thing, but the money from red poppies goes to the Royal British Legion which supports military veterans. My take is that service personnel are often treated appallingly and need our support. They have lived through terrible things that no one should have to, and then are expected to assimilate back into ordinary society - no wonder many have problems. Also, they are sometimes unscrupulously recruited from poorer communities where the only opportunity of social mobility and escape, is to join the services. We probably all hate the politicians who send other people's children off to fight and die in wars, but wouldn't dream of letting their own kids near any danger. But I would say, don't use that as an excuse not to buy a poppy to support those who did go. Yes it should never be compelled and there should never be peer pressure to make people feel they must comply, but I'm just giving some reasons why I think it's important.

Terrible, terrible news. Love to Daniel's family and friends. B4 had a huge, Ram-shaped heart. This place will be diminished without him - he epitomised the community that is dcfcfans. Heartbreaking.

Had Sky Sports on in the background with the live Saturday roundup, and was surprised to hear the reporter say "a billiant save by Kelle Roos". Apparently playing for Aberdeen, third in the Scottish Premiership (a long way back) and on the fringes of European football.

I love that there seem plenty of space geeks on here. Something that's going to come increasingly into the public consciousness over the next few years will be the work from Elon Musk's SpaceX to transport many tens of thousands of Humans to Mars to build the first sustainable settlement on another world. It sounds like fantasy, but the amazing thing is they're doing this in public view in Boca Chica, on the coast of Texas, and we can all watch. There are lots of livestreams and over the last couple of years a barren field has started to be transformed into a shipyard. But not for ordinary ships, for spaceships. The goal is ultimately to have completed ones roll off the production line once a week. And each will be able to take a hundred people at a time. The optimal time for going to Mars in terms of minimizing fuel (the launch window) comes round every 26 months and the plan is to have a fleet of Starships gather in Earth orbit that will then travel to Mars together, before returning to bring more settlers for the next launch window. Tickets will cost you about $250k but there'll be high baggage charges on top I should think. The secret to the low price comes from reusability and scale. SpaceX has pioneered rocket reusability and landed 65 or so "first stages" (the main rocket booster) after orbital insertion. No other company has done any - they're at least a decade ahead of the competition, but the competition should worry because their pace of innovation is extraordinary. The new rocket being built in Texas will be the first fully resusable craft where all of it flies again and again with minimal refurbishment, just the same as an airplane. The top section where the passengers and cargo will go is called Starship and the lower section to help boost it into orbit is called Super Heavy. In a dramatic innovation, instead of being built from an advanced carbon fiber skin these are both made from stainless steel. Making them a fraction of the normal rocket price. The Super Heavy booster is needed to escape Earth's gravity well. Once there it will return to Earth and launch half a dozen tankers to refuel Starship in orbit so it can fly much more quickly than normal to Mars (normally a spaceprobe just has enough fuel to reach escape velocity and then coasts all the way to Mars). Refuelling in orbit hasn't been attempted in the past, but is a technology we need to master to become a spacefaring species. Because Mars is smaller, with lower gravity (one-third of ours) the Starships can be what we call "single stage to orbit" when they take off from the red planet for the return journey. We'll build factories on Mars to manufacture fuel through a process called in situ resource utilization (ISRU), which is another technology we need to master to become spacefaring. And because they can carry so many passengers at a time, the price of the trip becomes a lot cheaper as it's divided between many more people. The Super Heavy booster will be quite similar to the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, just a lot bigger. So in principle SpaceX already knows how to design, build, fly and land that. They have started on the harder problem first, by developing Starship, the first ever fully resuable second stage. This week there's been a lot of work on the eighth prototype (called SN8 standing for serial number 8 ) which will probably be the first to attempt a high-altitude (15km up) test flight as the key trial of the novel landing system (the "belly flop"). Before now three different partial Starships have flown 150m on one engine only. It's been amazing to watch. Here's the Starship SN5 "hop test": While SN8 is the focus at the moment, also partly built are SN9 through to SN14, each better than the last, and also the very first Super Heavy booster (SH1) is being constructed. There's a good chance that the first Starships (without people) will go into orbit and return next year. There'll be hundreds of test flights before they start taking crew, but I'd expect the first uncrewed Starships to leave for Mars carrying cargo and experiments either late 2022 or early 2025. The reason SpaceX was founded was to safeguard Humanity's future by building a self-sustaining community on Mars, the aim to reach a population of a million by the end of this century. This is why the company is privately held and you can't buy shares, because shareholders might look at the amazing technology and say Mars colonization is a waste of money when we can do a lot of profitable stuff closer to home. However, NASA wants to return to the Moon by late 2024 (though after the US election this date will slip) and are contributing funds to create an adapted Starship to land on the Moon (the normal engines are too powerful for this because the rocket is so big, so SpaceX are going to add smaller thrusters higher up to do the job). However, Elon Musk has said it's easier to just go and land on the Moon than jump through all NASA's certification to say they'll allow someone to launch astronauts safely to the Moon. I hope we'll be able to keep this thread going over the next decade while we watch developments until the first Humans get to land on Mars, and it can be a wonderful record of the progress that took us to that point.